Winemaker Notes
This wine is hand crafted at every stage of its elaboration and reveals remarkable finesse and complexity and a golden color reminiscent of the sun that made it possible. With age the bright gold evolves to a dark amber color. With an extensive life-span, it powerfully and harmoniously combines fruit and floral aromas with roasted and candied notes.
Blend: 100% Sémillon
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Very intense spices on the nose with nutmeg, cinnamon, dried apples, apple tart, lemon peel and hints of brown sugar. Full-bodied and very sweet but not at all cloying. The center palate is more like preserved fruit than dried fruit. Mandarins, clementines and peach tart in a patisserie. The finish is endless. Lightly salty. Three pickings. 100% semillon for only the second time in the history of the estate. 138 g/L of residual sugar.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
In 2021, Suduiraut navigated through a challenging "annus horribilis," enduring significant losses from spring frost and downy mildew, nearly decimating the entire crop. However, amidst this adversity, the 2021 Suduiraut emerges as a real gem. Crafted solely from Sémillon grapes and yielding a minuscule crop of one hectoliter per hectare, this vintage is nothing short of remarkable, possessing a deep, complex bouquet of spices, vanilla pod, exotic fruits, ripe orchard fruits, herbs, flowers and menthol. Medium to full-bodied, it exudes concentration and richness, enveloping the palate with controlled power and impeccable balance. Its lively acidity complements a fleshy fruit core, culminating in a long, mineral-laden and precisely articulated finish. This vintage is one of the most refined and perfumed expressions ever produced at Suduiraut and could earn the maximum score in future years. Rating: 98+
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Jeb Dunnuck
Gorgeous stuff, the 2021 Château Suduiraut pretty much stopped me in my tracks, and it's up there with some of the finest Sauternes out there. Caramelized mint, honeyed orange, and exotic, tropical, floral notes all soar from the glass, and this beauty hits the palate with medium to full-bodied richness, a pure, layered, seamless mouthfeel, integrated acidity, and a great finish. Don't miss it.
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Decanter
Such an expressive nose as you’d expect from such tiny quantities of 1hl/ha in 2021. Candied lemon, wild honey, honey blossom and sweet orange on the nose - just smells so incredible. Sensual yet delicate, this has a real freshness and gentleness so you get a Sauternes weight and density on the mid palate but such refined edges and sense of lift. Aromas are more pronounced that expected - purity and freshness but an overwhelming sense of high definition, there is no hiding here so as well as the sucrosity you get the minerality and cinnamon edges that give the wine a real character. I love it! Sophisticated and thoughtful!
Barrel Sample: 96 -
Wine Enthusiast
The wine, rich with botrytis, also has a fine fresh citrus character from the brightness of the vintage. The wine is ripe, spicy with peppered apricot flavors.
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Wine Spectator
A bright, friendly, floral-edged style, with generous honeysuckle and orange blossom notes running alongside apricot, papaya and orange curd elements. Reveals light pie crust accents on the finish. Drink now through 2038. 397 cases made.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Sweet and unctuous but delightfully charming, the finest Sauternes typically express flavors of exotic dried tropical fruit, candied apricot, dried citrus peel, honey or ginger and a zesty beam of acidity.
Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Sauvignon Gris and Muscadelle are the grapes of Sauternes. But Sémillon's susceptibility to the requisite noble rot makes it the main variety and contributor to what makes Sauternes so unique. As a result, most Sauternes estates are planted to about 80% Sémillon. Sauvignon is prized for its balancing acidity and Muscadelle adds aromatic complexity to the blend with Sémillon.
Botrytis cinerea or “noble rot” is a fungus that grows on grapes only in specific conditions and its onset is crucial to the development of the most stunning of sweet wines.
In the fall, evening mists develop along the Garonne River, and settle into the small Sauternes district, creeping into the vineyards and sitting low until late morning. The next day, the sun has a chance to burn the moisture away, drying the grapes and concentrating their sugars and phenolic qualities. What distinguishes a fine Sauternes from a normal one is the producer’s willingness to wait and tend to the delicate botrytis-infected grapes through the end of the season.